The Powder Box

photo credit: ebay

Yesterday, I suddenly thought of a gray metal musical powder box that my grandma had given me. 

Not given to me directly. Grandma and grandpa split their belongings 16 ways - one set of items for each grandchild - and put each set of items in its own metal fireproof safety box. Each grandchild would receive the box when they got married. 

I watched each of my siblings and my cousins grow up and open their boxes and we would all exclaim over the objects that we remembered from their home.

​The day finally came when I got my box and got to open it. It was a long shiny shallow metal box that could slide under the bed - with my name on it. 

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I got part of Grandpa's coin and stamp collection - divided among the kids. Eight silver dessert forks for my future afternoon tea times.  Diaries from both grandma and grandpa.

All the genealogy work my grandpa had done was in paper form held together by fasteners in a black folder - a copy that has gotten tremendous use by me. There were letters and pictures I had sent to them as a child.

Grandma had divided up some of her personal things and household knick-knacks. I received a red glass vase and two Santa figurines that slip onto a candle.

The most important object was my grandma's powder puff box. It was an ugly gray metal  box - aluminum - and shaped like a dome with a round picture on the top. The picture was a Victorian scene; I thought of it as a French woman in a blue dress with white hair all done up. It had a wind up key on the bottom because it was also a music box. The peach colored powder puff nestled in the powder under the lid, and it had sat on her dresser.

I don't recall going in to her room often, it was "off limits', and so a special and rare treat when she led me and my sister in to see her "secrets'. On her dresser, besides the powder box, was her hairbrush and mirror. I can still recall the smell of the powder and her brush. She and my Grandpa had twin beds with white coverlets, side by side. And the closet. She would open the closet and there on the shelves were little bottles - from her various ailments and operations. A bottle of her gallstones. A bottle with glass shards. So creepy and fascinating! The visit over, she would close the door and we could only hope to see it all again sometime. 

​I hadn't thought about round gray powder box in ages. Even though it was the most interesting object in my inheritance box, it hadn't really meant much to me. I may have once or twice played the music and opened the lid and smelled the powder.

But suddenly I wanted it. I wanted to hear the music to know what music she liked. I wanted to smell the powder that was her. I frantically tried to recall where I seen it last. After all, I had had for 35 years and countless moves. Mixed in with the frantic searching was anger. Anger that I hadn't liked it or appreciated it when I dd know where it was. Anger that like so many times - I waited and waited holding onto an object that I could not find any logical or emotional reason to hold onto - and finally would give it away or sell it, only years later to wish t have and hold it again. As if it took my heart all those years to open up to it.

I knew in my heart it was gone. I couldn't think of the last time I had seen it. It was never on my dresser, I had kept it in my closet. The more I thought about where it might be, the more upset I got that I could never have it back - could never smell that smell again.  I looked on ebay and found several that were very similar if not exact replicas of the one she gave me. I went to sleep think I would order one in the morning to replace the lost one.

Morning came and after my puja I started thinking again of the box and my grandma. Tears came and suddenly I felt an ache in my heart - heavy and hard and pulling, like it was being yanked inside of me.  

I have been wearing a heart monitor and having all sorts of test done on my heart for three months, and there are all sorts of physical symptoms. But one symptoms that has been absent is any feeling at all in my heart. For as long as I can remember. That area of my chest has been absent of feeling and sensation.

The minute I felt that pain sensation, I wondered if the lost box was about losing my grandma, and other losses. And how my first thought was to replace the box- ignore the loss - fix it.

i decided not to replace it and instead to keep noticing my heart. There is an upset-ness there. Something has been lost. It cannot or should not be replaced. This is healing.